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Thursday, October 09, 2008

The pundits and talking heads pretty much agree that there was nothing "game changing" about the second Presidential debate. I'm not so sure about that.

If you've been reading this blog, you'll remember that when McCain suspended his campaign, I offered a solution to the banking crisis. What I said was that we should make every possible effort to renegotiate the loans rather than foreclose. These are bad risks, but they're not losses... not yet, anyway, unless we foreclose and take the loss. I mentioned then,

Of course, my plan would never make it to the table because it actually makes sense and it would actually work. Let's see what sort of "second best" solution they come up with.

Well, it looks like something very much like my plan has indeed been offered... by John McCain. It is, in fact, the only memorable thing about the second debate. While Obama was fumbling around with his head in the past trying to assign blame to anything but Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (where it properly belongs), McCain has moved past the "blame game" to suggest a solution: that the Federal government should buy these loans to renegotiate them, either to sell them off or hold them until paid.

This idea differs from mine in that the government would buy the loans outright rather than direct lenders to renegotiate them. I happen to like my version better because it places no burden on the taxpayers (who after all are not responsible for this mess); however, it's quite likely that my version will have some negative impact on the economy in the near-term due to the lessened ability of these lenders to make additional loans (for lack of capital). I happen to think that's OK; that other lenders will appear, and that companies you haven't heard of yet, but which are in better shape financially, will step up and fill the gap. Again, that's OK, because those companies currently on top really don't deserve to stay there. Adversity is the mother of opportunity. And if necessity is the mother of invention, opportunity is its father. I do not guess or hope that the financial void will be filled; I know it. It is as inevitable as the change of seasons.

The McCain plan would keep the top players where they are and would put an onus on the taxpayer. This would provide greater short-term stability in the market. And the onus is temporary, as the money will be recouped; probably most of it within ten years. I don't much like the idea of privatizing most of this industry, but it would actually work, and is indeed "second best" to the plan I would prefer. Renegotiating the loans and keeping those homeowners in their houses are the most important aspects of any workable solution. The rest of it is negotiable, and I think this is a good compromise.

I expect to hear a lot of complaints from Libertarians and the far Right as well as from Democrats who are pissed because they didn't think of it first.

Tuesday, October 07, 2008

You've probably received an email questioning where Barack Obama got the money for a 'round the world trip while he was in college, for his house, etc. The implication is that there is some sort of conspiracy among nefarious evil-doers to enrich Obama. This post is directed specifically at those people who buy into those implications.

The short answer is, he took out student loans. Then followed a long, drawn-out process of repaying student loans on professor's and lawyer's salary (not exactly a paltry sum), then huge income from best-selling book to finally pay off those loans.

The only one that's not fully explained so far is the trip in '81, but if you're staying with friends and relatives, even that one is do-able. Nothing nefarious is required.

Imagine that you're a candidate. You have a volunteer organization to raise and collect campaign donations, and these people are hired by yet more volunteers. The plain fact is that you don't even know the people who are working on your behalf. You accept funds on the Internet, by phone, by check.

How are you, personally, supposed to know that any of these donors are who they say they are? The best you can really do is return money if irregularities crop up.

I think it highly unlikely that, even if he knew all these illegal donors personally, Obama would have solicited campaign donations from them. First of all, at this point he doesn't need the money: he has enough donations from legitimate Democrat donors. Second, this sort of connection harms his campaign more than the money helps. If he were a real evil genius he'd have told these people to shut up and lie low. The "fault" of these donations lies with the donors, not the candidate. If you make it the candidate's fault, then you can't defend McCain when similar things happen without his knowledge.

What IS disturbing Obama's relationship with William Ayers, known unrepentant terrorist. Obama can't convincingly pretend that he didn't know about this guy. Obama was a professor. He was a lawyer; well educated, knowledgable and highly interested in political affairs. And yet he's perfectly willing (despite all his claims to exerience) to imply that he was naive and stupid enough to sit in Ayers' kitchen and plan his political career. So depending on whether you choose to believe Obama's story, either his judgment is completely suspect, he's a conspirator, or he actually IS naive and ignorant. Any of these conclusions validates the Republicans' opinion of him. None of these conclusions recommends him for President.

UPDATE (2008-10-09): As it turns out, the link between Obama and Ayers is much stronger than initially thought. Read about it in American Thinker. Better yet, read about it in the Wall Street Journal. Obama's campaign wants to distance themselves from Ayers, stating that "any attempt to connect Obama with events of almost 40 years ago is ridiculous." The problem for Obama is, nobody's trying to do that. They're examining the public record and connecting him with events of which he himself was an active participant. And these events are troubling: personally, I would characterize it as no less than an attempt to subvert the educational system and indoctrinate children. As Stanley Kurtz rightly observes, that is a story "even if Ayers had never planted a single bomb 40 years ago."

What's also disturbing is the quality of supporter that Obama attracts. It's understandable that people in the Middle East support him. The guy's name is Arabic, after all, and Libya's Qadafi thinks he's a "good Muslim" on that basis alone. But he's gathering support from terrorists, hostile governments, and a wide lunatic fringe. There's a reason for that. I think it's pretty clear that they know he's naive; they can see with their own eyes from the Ayers connection that he's sympathetic to terrorists (and there's no denying that he's been sympathetic to at least one); and they think he's a pushover. Hostile governments have no reason whatsoever to support a US candidate unless they are convinced in their minds and hearts he is bad for this country. I happen to agree with them... a Barack Obama presidency would be a disaster, and a gift to the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

But these are largely questions about other peoples' support of Obama, which he can't fully control. Beyond these connections, what disturbs me the most is the things that he can directly control. The fact is that for all his talk of "change", Obama has few if any votes or actions that support his talk. In the debate and in all his stump speeches he looks back for blame for the economic situation and Iraq (consistently mis-assigning blame). For months he's been running against George Bush, NOT John McCain. He picked a left-wing career Capitol insider as his running mate. He hasn't even made it to the PRESENT, much less looked to the future. His campaign slogans are quite simply untrue. They're not supported at all by his actions.

By contrast McCain looks to solutions. He has been pushing his ideas for years, and only now have the times caught up with him. He chose a running mate with an eye to the future, and he picked her from far outside the Capitol Beltway. He walks his talk.